Working For the Weekend
by Streets of Fire
Summary: Ginny takes a week long job at Weasley Wizard Wheezes, if only to get out of the Burrow. Too little floo powder, talking dirty pictures and all the fun that comes with the service industry ensues. Multichapter!
1. One Floo Over the Cuckoos Nest

A/N My first long term story since the "First Kiss" debacle. I'd like to think I've progressed as a writer since then.

Chapter 1: One Floo Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"Ah! We'll need to get a little more," Mrs. Weasley sighed woefully as she shook the last of the floo powder into her daughter's upturned hand, "Could you pick me up some while you're there dear?"

"Sure, mum." Ginny swung her backpack onto her shoulder, leaning down to close the considerable distance between she and her mother, and planted a peck on her mother's cheek before casting the meager handful of floo powder into the fire place, "Seeya soon mum. **Weasley's Wizard Wheezes**!"

In a moment, she was gone from the cozy kitchen of the Burrow and spiraling through the Floo Network™, leaving Mrs. Weasley working her hands worriedly.

"Oh, dear," she sighed, furrowing her brow at the spot where her daughter had just left, "I hope she's packed enough under things…"

* * *

Ginny sneezed, disturbing an oddly thick layer of dust that surrounded her. _Bloody fireplaces_, she thought with a scowl. Generally, Ginny did not like floo powder, preferring one of the many other wizardly modes of travel (save for magic carpets, which gave her the willies), but unless she wanted to haul her butt from Little Whinging to Diagon Alley at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning, she would need to suck it up.

During one of their weekly trips to the Burrow that weekend, Fred and George had come to her on bended (and highly sarcastic) knee, begging her (sort of) to stand in for their usual counter-girl, who had apparently taken badly to an especially potent batch of Fainting Fancies and had collapsed face first into a display of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder.

"Simply awful!"

"Terrible!"

"Had to shut down the shop for the rest o' the day!"

"So please, can you please, please, please, _please _cover for us?"

"We'll give you anything!" This is where the twins had dropped to their knees, gazing up with their best puppy eyes (which were complete shite in Ginny's opinion).

"Can I get paid?" They twins shared a thoughtful glance.

"Minimally."

"Can I get out of the Burrow?"

"Sure. We've got an extra room."

"Done."

So here she was…er… Where _was_ she? Ginny started to rise, bumping her head unceremoniously on a low ceiling. _That's odd_, Ginny reflected, _Wizard Wheezes has a pretty tall fireplace. Where the hell _am_ I?_

Ginny crawled cautiously forward, sweeping the ash in front of her with her hands to avoid any surprises. After a few moments, she came to a busted up wrought iron grill, a thin strip of light shining through the thin seam where the doors met. Shimmying backwards a little, Ginny landed a square kick on said seam, letting in a flood of musty gray light. As her eyes readjusted to the light, a flat, decaying smell hit her nose.

"What the bloody hell is that!" Ginny's hand flew to cover her nose and mouth as the answer became abundantly clear.

Before her, on the lower level of dusty glass display case, sat a shriveled head. Its (or her, rather, judging by the tautly tied bun sprouting grotesquely from the back of the head) eyelids hung down over murky black eyes and thin, cracked lips hung open, pulling at paper-thin skin in such a way that the head rasped, "What are you doing here?"

"Miss," a voice repeated, "What are you doing back here…?" It wasn't the talking head at all, but instead a hunched old man who stood above her, rubbing his hands together with a soft scratching sound.

" I…er…not enough floo powder…ended up…" She refused the gnarled, calloused hand the old man offered and opted instead to wobble to her feet, shaking away the dust and floo stupor that seemed to have claimed her linguistic skills. " I'm sorry. I'll be going now." The old man withdrew his hand (looking just the tiniest bit sour), but acted as if he hadn't heard her at all.

"I see you have found Madame Grondcoric. She one our…mmm… prizes." The shopkeeper gestured to the shrunken head, giving it a slight pat. "Promised us her head _years_ before she passed on. What a lovely woman…"

With this he wandered away, stopping ever so often to caress one of the grotesque oddities that filled the shelves. Alone again, Ginny hurried towards the front of the shop, trying hard to ignore the tinkling scream that accompanied her exit, as well as the shopkeeper's hoarse, "Come again!"

Ginny wandered into the street, shading her eyes in the daylight. She turned to read the shop's sign.

" Borgin and Burkes," she wondered aloud.

"Oh yes," came a voice close to her ear, "Quite the establishment…"

" Er, what?" Ginny turned to see a very tall witch with very long hair that looked as if it was made up of various textures and colors, as if she had taken someone else's hair and attached it to her own.

"Nothing, nothing my pet," the witch said with a virtually toothless smile, reaching out to with a single crooked finger to lightly prod at a curl in Ginny's hair, "Such red hair! Never seen such red hair!"

"Must be going," Ginny laughed nervously, backing away slowly.

Once she was a safe distance from the muttering woman, Ginny shouldered her backpack and gazed at the street around her.

Most of the shops looked shady and grubby, with crumbling gold lettering above their doors. On the street there were few clumps of people, the trend seemed to be of solitary figures trying hard not to be recognized. Although it was relatively warm outside, Ginny shivered as her eyes fell upon a street sign hanging high up on a rusted pole.

"Now what is a _Weasel_ doing in Knockturn Alley?" Ginny could recognize that voice anywhere; silky, arrogant, and laced with ill-disguised contempt. "Filthier than usual it seems." Malfoy planted himself in front of the red head, crossing his arms and setting a look of smug amusement on his face.

" Not like you own it, _Ferret._" Angry as she was, Ginny couldn't help but redden just the tiniest bit. She really was covered almost head to toe in soot and cobwebs. Ginny wiped her dirty hands uselessly on her equally grime covered jeans.

"Actually, my father does." He languidly tossed his arm out, indicating a row of cleaner looking shops.

"Well, that isn't _you_ is it? Tell me, when are you going to stop riding your father's coat tails and grow a pair of your own?"

Malfoy's sneer sagged, but any response was cut off by a distant, but equally silky and smug, voice that called, "Stop harassing the plebian Draco, even if it is a _Weasley_."

The last word was spat with such venom that both teens cringed a little (Draco recognized the poisonous tone as one that often rendered his name into a pile of animal excrement), but Malfoy withdrew with a final twitchy smirk.

"So long, Weaslette."

Ginny waited until the father and son had sauntered away before hurrying towards the mouth of the street that fed into the significantly brighter Diagon Alley. As she passed the familiar sights of Gringott's, Madame Malkin's and finally the shimmering windows of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, Ginny was so relieved to see the inviting shop front that she didn't even bother to contemplate the fact that she had just been referred to as a plebian.


	2. Room with a View

For J.M Rekark; the only one who's shown the slightest bit of interest in this story.

Chapter 2: Room With a View

"Finally!" George called from behind the counter, poking hopelessly at the register, "We were wondering what'd happened ta you!"

"Possibly murdered, probably kidnapped," Fred added as he kicked open the storeroom door and plopped a large stack of boxes on the countertop as Ginny wandered deeper into the store.

The joke shop had the same warm, comfortableness as the Burrow, and Ginny found it very familiar although she could count the number of times she had visited on her hands. In each front window was a scroll bobbing lazily, advertising the newest merchandise to passersby. Most of the displays were pushed against the wall, with a number of high sellers floating in the middle of the floor.

"Can't get it to bloody dis-a-whatsit," scoffed Fred bitterly, gesturing to a stubborn black cloud that was hanging about in one corner of the shop. He gave a slight flick of the wand and a legion of gilded hand fans appeared, flapping futilely at the powder. "Anyway, where've ya been, Gin."

Ginny frowned, furrowing her brow at the events that had so thoroughly ruined her morning. _Too bad they're expert liars_, she sighed to herself, _They'll never believe anything I come up with_. With a helpless shrug, she delivered the truth to the best of her ability.

"It was so nice out, I floo-ed in at the Leaky Cauldron and walked the rest of the ways." They should have known it was damned-able lie. Diagon Alley had become increasingly depressing with all its boarded up shops and suspicious shoppers. No one would willingly taken a stroll through the Alley unless they had to.

"Bah. Whatever," George said without an ounce of suspicion, "Come with me, I'll show you where to drop your stuff."

"Home sweet home!" George proclaimed later, throwing open the heavy door to a plain looking room complete faded yellow curtains, a squat, battered chest of drawers, a thick mattress with a rusty bed frame and a picture that would have been rather lewd if its subjects had been snoozing away happily. "Old owners left all this stuff. Even the…er, picture."

Ginny wondered over to the window, gazing over the scene outside her window. The building next to her window shouldered in, its brick sides just a tad out of arm's reach, but a rusted out fire escape ladder

There was a very abrupt drop into what she assumed was an alley, and then a clear view of the Leaky Cauldron and most of the surrounding shops. She'd always wondered where and how Diagon Alley ended, but it seemed that after a set or two of closely packed streets, the skyline blurred and dropped away.

"Kitchen and bathroom are down the hall." Ginny dropped her bag on the bed, testing the mattress with her hands.

"Blah, blah, blah," George yawned as he joined his twin in the doorframe, "Anyway, as men of the world, we have much to do."

"And by we, we mean us."

"And as men of the world, we mean suddenly rich an' smarmy bastards."

"And by much to do, we mean buy things that would make our dear old mem scrape our faces across a washboard."

"So mum's the word." They both laid a finger along their noses, and in the perfect unison that Ginny had often admired, winked conspiratorially. "Hold down the fort for us, yeah?" Without waiting for an answer, the pair disappeared, rattling down the stairs and rousing someone in the lewd portrait on the wall.

One of the subjects, a portly half-naked woman, sat halfway up and looked over Ginny before rubbing her eyes and poked the other figure on the buttocks, sighing groggily, " 'S tha' time agin dearie?"

A/N Short, I know. But my fingers hurt. Think of it as a transitional chapter. And 'mem' is mom. Seamus says it in OotP, and think that's just so damn cute. I'm a sucker for Irish accents… and anything acoustic. Stop me before I get on a lyrics reciting roll! By reviewing.


End file.
